Ba Gan Koey

1. Location

The community is located in the Satun province on the Malay Peninsula, separated by a mountain range from Malaysia. The Ko Tarutao and Ko Phetra marine national parks are located in the area of Satun. More close to the Malaysian border but not too far from the community you can find the Thale Ban National Park, which serve as a freshwater swamp area. The community itself has 600 residents which settled from Malaysia around 30 years ago. The community therefore is a Muslim community and speaks an interesting mixture of Thai and Malaysian.

2. Highlights

“Enjoy to stay in a very authentic and charming fisherman’s village, full with warm-hearted people and exciting activities as lobster catching, fishing your own dinner or weaving a heat out of palm leafs”

3. Why is Ba Gan Koey special?

Ba Gan Koey community is really worth to visit. You will be treated like a family member, participating in daily life of residents by fishing, weaving or cooking in the beautiful surrounding of fisherman’s village. The village is built on stalks and offers an unrestricted look over the sea until the horizon.

4. Don’t miss…

Activities for guests

Catch a Lobster

To introduce visitors to the community and their traditions the community shows a nice movie, which also shows and explains the method of catching lobsters in the mud of the seaside. This work is normally done by the youth of the community and you will get the opportunity to participate in this activity if you would like to. It’s also possible to produce shrimp paste from the caught animals.

Hat weaving

The women of the community will show you how to make your own hat by weaving palm leafs, after you helped them to collect and prepare the leafs for this process.

Be a fisherman

To experience the local fisherman’s life you will wake up early and catch your own fish for dinner after enjoying the beautiful sunrise.

Relax

In combination with the fisherman’s experience you will get the opportunity to relax a bit on one of the surrounding islands of Satun area. Guests can also go to visit the mangrove forest and stop for a while at a sand bank, where you can observe the fast rise and fall of the sea level very good.

Make Nipa palm deserts

After the delicious dinner, you can help the women to prepare a popular local desert: A dough of coconut, brown sugar, flower and water wrapped in Nipa palm leaves and simmered over the fire.

5. Green Corner: People and Planet

The community of Ba Gan Koey produces its own shrimp paste to gain income from local products, also the hats they make from palm leafs can be sold and ensure their livelihood. To make sure the development of community and tourism goes further into the direction the residents agree with, community members meet regularly to discuss problems and ideas. In these meetings men, women and children participate to reach the best interest matching result for the the community as a whole.